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Charlie Kirk is the Founder and President of Turning Point USA, the largest and fastest growing conservative youth activist organization in the country with over 250,000 student members, over 150 full-time staff, and a presence on over 2,000 high school and college campuses nationwide. Charlie is also the Chairman of Students for Trump, which aims to activate one million new college voters on campuses in battleground states in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election. His social media reaches over 100 million people per month and according to Axios, he is one of the "top 10 most engaged" Twitter handles in the world. He is also the host of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” which regularly ranks among the top news shows on Apple podcast charts.
Leftists Attack Charlie Kirk's Memorial Banner at Department of Education Building After His Murder
After Charlie Kirk's murder by a left-wing radical on a college campus, the Department of Education honored him with a banner alongside Booker T. Washington and Catherine Beecher. The tribute recognized heroes in American education who empowered states over federal control. Instead of respectful disagreement, leftist commentators like Mehdi Hasan launched vicious attacks, with Hasan calling for the banner's removal and describing it as disgusting. This response reveals the deep hostility toward someone who advocated for educational freedom, questioned the college system's value, and championed American principles including free speech—the very principles he died defending while engaging with those who disagreed with him.
A banner displayed at the Department of Education became the center of controversy when it featured Charlie Kirk's face alongside historical education figures Booker T. Washington and Catherine Beecher. The banner's message read: "Empowering our states to tell the stories of our heroes in American education." This tribute reflected the Department of Education's agenda of empowering states rather than maintaining a large federal department, ultimately with the goal of abolishing federal overreach in education.
The banner honored Kirk as a hero in American education, someone who challenged the status quo and advocated for educational alternatives beyond the traditional four-year college model. Rather than being met with respectful discourse or even legitimate criticism, the memorial sparked vicious attacks from leftist commentators who couldn't tolerate even a posthumous tribute to someone murdered for his beliefs.
Mehdi Hasan's Disgraceful Response
Leading the charge was Mehdi Hasan, the disgraced former MSNBC broadcaster. Hasan posted on social media: "First Democratic presidential candidate who publicly pledges to tear down this particular banner on day one of his or her administration gets an immediate bump in their presidential primary polling." His visceral disgust was palpable—not just disagreement, but fury that anyone would dare commemorate someone heinously murdered by a left-wing radical.
The irony was stark. Hasan has been vocal about opposing war and various political positions, yet showed no grace toward Kirk, who himself was hesitant about certain military interventions. Instead of acknowledging that Kirk was killed while on a campus advocating for American principles and free speech, engaging with people who disagreed with him—one of whom shot him—Hasan expressed support for erasing his memory from public view.
Hasan, who came to America from a foreign country and received citizenship, chose to reward that opportunity by attacking an American icon and hero. His background includes a resurfaced 2009 sermon where he quoted the Quran to describe atheists and non-believers as "cattle," called them "deaf and stubborn to the teachings of Islam," and listed homosexuality and pedophilia alongside other sins in describing historical tyrants. Despite being welcomed into a country with superior freedoms and culture, he used those very freedoms to smear the legacy of someone who died defending American values.
John Pavlovitz Joins the Attack
Another voice in the chorus of condemnation came from John Pavlovitz, a left-wing Christian writer known for his book and social media presence. Pavlovitz declared: "Charlie Kirk was a horrible human being who despised diversity, empathy, and equality. His face belongs nowhere near a government building, let alone one devoted to education." He then promoted his Substack article titled "The shameful Christian idolatry and fraudulent martyrdom of Charlie Kirk."
This attack misrepresented Kirk's actual positions. Kirk opposed equity—a term rooted in communist ideology that demands equal outcomes rather than equal opportunities—not equality. He championed diversity of thought and empathy for working-class Americans who were being told their only path to success was through expensive college degrees that often left them in debt with worthless credentials.
The Real Charlie Kirk and Education
The claim that Kirk didn't belong in an education building fundamentally misunderstands his mission. Kirk was a massive advocate for education throughout life. He championed Christian education and classical education models, frequently featured Hillsdale College, and constantly discussed what people should learn and how they could maximize their educational experiences.
When Kirk criticized colleges, he wasn't attacking education or learning itself. He wrote about "the college scam," not "the education scam" or "the learning scam." He believed the modern college system had become a way for institutions to cheat people—that it was eroding the values that once made higher education important and had become a mechanism for scammers to rip people off by charging $200,000 for degrees with little practical value.
Kirk loved education and encouraged people to pursue it. He simply rejected the mindless parroting of regime media talking points that insisted "college or bust" was the only acceptable path. He celebrated HVAC technicians, plumbers, and people who work with their hands—those who "shower before and after work." He believed in multiple pathways to success and dignity in all honest work.
The Deeper Meaning of the Attacks
These attacks on Kirk's memorial reveal something deeper about the current political and cultural divide. Kirk was murdered by someone who disagreed with him—a left-wing radical who couldn't tolerate his advocacy for free speech and American principles on a college campus. Rather than prompting reflection about political violence and the importance of civil discourse, his death became another opportunity for his opponents to attack him.
The visceral nature of these responses—calling for the immediate removal of a memorial banner, describing it as disgusting and shameful—demonstrates an inability to extend basic human decency even to someone who died advocating for the principles he believed in. These commentators received the grace to live and express themselves freely in America, yet they offer no grace in return, not even to the memory of someone killed for exercising those same freedoms.
The Department of Education's decision to honor Kirk alongside Booker T. Washington and Catherine Beecher recognized his contribution to the national conversation about education, state empowerment, and alternatives to the federal education bureaucracy. That this tribute would generate such hatred says more about his critics than it does about Kirk or his legacy.
